OPINION: MERCY RULE NEEDS TO BE RULED OUT

By Al Mattei
Founder, TopOfTheCircle.com

Fifteen times since 2004, a scholastic field hockey team has scored more than 15 goals in a single game. Eleven times since 2001, a field hockey team has scored 130 or more goals in a season -- five just in 2005.

And already in 2006, scores of 15-0, 14-0, 13-0, and 12-0 (twice) have been reported.

It is a different game today, where composite sticks, sleek polyester skirts, and artificial turf have replaced the bladed mulberry sticks, wool plaid kilts, and lush lawns of the past.

Tactically-aware athletic elite Futures players are clustered sometimes four or five on a team, leading to a wider disparity between good teams and the have-nots.

Some adults, who in their infinite wisdom are looking to interfere in the affairs of high-school students, have attempted various ways of managing competition in attempting to legislate sportsmanship.

A "mercy rule" was tried in the late 1990s in the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association (MPSSAA), through which a five-goal margin of victory would lead to the cessation of the game.

The rule lasted until someone pointed out that the rule could make the Maryland season, the shortest in the country, a whole lot shorter.

The latest outrage has come courtesy of the Burlington County Scholastic League (BCSL), which passed a rule in 2006 which places a seven-goal limit on victories -- only for field hockey and soccer. Two seven-goal wins in a season would result in a one-game suspension of the head coach. Three in a season would result in a two-game suspension of the head coach.

So, what we have here is a league looking to overrule the administration of a sport (well, three sports and possibly more), saying that the rules and interpretations of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) isn't good enough.

What many in the South Jersey sports intelligentsia have picked up on is that on the first week of the season, a football game ended up with the final score of 49-0 (essentially, seven touchdowns plus extra points to nothing), and nobody is apparently calling for sanctions against the winning coach.

"If they think running up the score is bad, why are there no rules in tennis, football or cross country?" asked New Egypt head coach Patti Nicholson. "That's discrimination."

And it is also a disservice to small-town teams who rely on multiple excuses for why their teams never get out of the cellar of their particular league.

"What's the motivation for the other teams to get better? You don't have to be better anymore. You can be mediocre," Nicholson says.

Or what's worse, the game itself could be changed forever. What if a team, holding a seven-goal lead, chooses to let the opposing team score, only to attack off the next hitback? Could there be a raft of 14-8, 13-7, 12-6, and 11-5 scores? That would threaten the integrity of the game, change the nature of competition, and threaten high-school sport in general.

Mercy rules of any sort do not teach any lessons. They will prevent coaches from getting a really good feel as to what a starting 11 will do when a game is 50 to 60 minutes old (such as what will happen in the playoffs), or it will prevent a coach from seeing the end-of-bench players to assess how they will perform when the inevitable injuries occur, or how they will do two or three years down the line when they are starters.

The rules also remove the possibility of the miracle comeback. If, for example, there had been a mercy rule in place in the FIFA U-17 World Cup in the summer of 2003, there would be no amazing comeback on the part of Cameroon against a favored Portugal side in a thrilling 5-5 draw. There would be no comeback for the Buffalo Bills pro football team in the 1992 playoffs; Houston had been ahead by five touchdowns.

The mercy rule is also, I believe, a slap in the face of coaches who are not trusted to exercise their own judgment as to what margin of victory is appropriate.

Rules cannot be allowed, under any circumstances, to curtail field hockey's offensive explosion. After all, it could hamper the competitiveness and marketablity of some athletes.

And seeing as New Jersey has only two players on the World Cup team -- both from the same high school -- having one of the state's oldest conference adopting what could be an illegal rule is the dumbest thing that can be done.

"Don't hate me because I'm beautiful," the commercial says.

Well, the mercy rule adds no beauty to the game. And it should be mercifilly retired.